Which artist created the 'Beethoven Frieze' for the Vienna Secession exhibition?

Gustav Klimt created the Beethoven Frieze for the Vienna Secession exhibition.

Klimt painted the work for the Fourteenth Vienna Secession exhibition, held in 1902 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s death. It was designed as an immersive contribution to the exhibition’s ideal of a Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art, in which architecture, painting, music, and design worked together.

The monumental frieze presents humanity’s search for happiness. A knight representing armed strength confronts hostile forces before the narrative reaches a concluding embrace associated with poetry and the Ninth Symphony. Klimt’s use of gold, symbolic figures, patterned surfaces, and mythic imagery makes it a defining work of Viennese Art Nouveau.

Visitors sometimes confuse the painting with work by Koloman Moser or other Secession members because the exhibition was collaborative. The artwork itself, however, is unambiguously Klimt’s. It is now displayed in the Secession Building in Vienna.